Thinking through practice: Re-envisioning Kolb through applied design pedagogy

Kolb’s model has influenced education practices for nearly forty years. Its focus on ‘doing’ is closely aligned to cognitive activity. There is criticism that Kolb focusses on the individual grasping and transforming experience purely through the mind rather than the perceptual system and wider being. The reflective experiences of the research assistants/makers contributing to the Maker Project (Sutton, 2019) highlights how experience and sensory/emotive responses are not well served within Kolb’s existing paradigm. Adopting elements of Beard’s Holistic Experiential Learning Model (HELM), the Maker Project supports wider research which demonstrates how emotion, environment, and community contribute to the learning experience (Moon, 2000; Beard, 2023). This presentation seeks to re-situate non-cognitive processes at the heart of teaching and learning returning democracy to education. Echoing Sternberg’s (1996) theory that creative thinking should be considered ‘three dimensional’, we chart the evolution of the Experiential Learning Orbicular (Sutton, 2023) which allows for a pedagogically holistic and multi-directional application. This research provides methods to support deep learning throughout all levels of education, enabling a pedagogical paradigm that is meaningful, reflective, and well-structured for lifelong learners.